Taxi Driver Online

Gossip on the ranks of Manchester, has it that Manchester plate no 518, which is attached to a TX4 with only 1,500 on the clock (less than a week old) has blown its engine. The engine has been reportedly shipped back to Italy for VM's engineers to investigate. Lets hope he has a replacement cab. I must stress it is only gossip, will post update as and when.

Some engines have gone with even less mileage

OK, Mr Skippy41, we'll all believe you!!!

BUT!!

So that we can all have genuine trust in your proclamation & as you are a mine of information on everything LTI can you please provide the following evidence to verify your statement;

1. How many TX4 engines have blown-up with less than 1,500 miles on the clock?
2. Where were each of these TX4 cabs with blown engines licensed?
3. What was the licence plate number of each of these TX4 cabs with blown engines in their respective LAs?
4. What were the precise dates that each of these TX4s suffered the fatal breakdown in their engine department?
5. Were the engines removed from each of these affected TX4 cabs & sent back to VM in Italy for investigation?
6. If so, on what individual dates were each of these engines shipped back to Itally?
7. If the engines from each of these affected TX4s were not all shipped back to Italy for investigation, how many were shipped back & how many were not?
8. If some of the engines that blew-up were not shipped back to Italy for investigation, please give reasons why this was the case?
9. Once you have answered the previous eight questions, please advise us of all the other information that you are keeping from the Forum about TX4 premature engine failures.

I have great trust in you Mr Skippy41, but there are others on this Forum that will identify any waffling answers you may give to the questions posed as

f*cking bullsh*t!!

_________________
Kind regards,

Brummie Cabbie.

Type a message, post your news,
Disagree with other members' views;
But please, do have some decorum,
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Mr BC, I get the impression that you are having an anti Skippy day.

I wonder if even LTI could answer all your questions - I doubt that they would know plate numbers that subsequent to sale would be applied to a vehicle for example. They may not even know in which area a cab was to be used.

To be a little fairer to Mr Skippy41, perhaps evidence along the same lines but in relation to one vehicle would suffice. The chances are nil that anybody who drives a Taxi in the real world would have a chance of climbing the mountain you propose Mr BC.

So, Skippy, can you do one?

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Chris The Fish

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gdlyi5mc ... re=related

MR Brum, It was MR T that mentioned the problems a while back
Something to do with no oil getting through to the top end and the engine blowing on quite a few, all down they thought to an oil filter, but it could have been something else as well as the VM Motori factory was still investigating it
They are also prone to overheating
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-snSQfLLjs0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B06AaFgI ... re=related

PS, I don't think MR T could answer your long list either

My point was your statement, 'Some engines have gone with even less mileage.'

And you all take me too seriously when I'm 'extracting the urine'.

I do have a quite jovial, although very dry, side to my character.

Back to the point in question; TX4 engines failing prematurely.

I'm not a mechanic, although I am mechanically minded & until my newly acquired Renault of 6 months ago, I did a lot of my own basic vehicle maintenance; mostly everything that did not involve engines, gearboxes & diffs.

To me it's quite obvious what the problems are likely to be with these engines.

IMO they are two-fold; negligence in the removal of water & oil gallery forming materials in the engine manufacturing process & incorrect oil specification by the manufacturer.

I will deal with the second of these problem first as it is easier.

Recently I had to investigate oil specifications because my wife had just bought a ‘56 plate Citroen C4 & three different Citroen garages recommended three different oils for the car. No change there then.

Previously, I had thought that a 0W/30 oil for instance could not be used in say a five-year-old vehicle which had a 10W/40 oil specification at birth. I had thought that the 0W/30 would be too thin.

WRONG!!

I found an excellent website on oils (car, bike, marine etc.) called Opie Oils, a family business since 1925.

Here are some interesting pages from their website, which has masses of articles on oil & everything to do with oil for the very serious mechanical enthusiasts;

http://www.opieoils.co.uk/pdfs/common-misconception.pdf
http://www.opieoils.co.uk/pdfs/Lubrican ... ations.pdf
http://www.opieoils.co.uk/t-does-using- ... ranty.aspx
http://www.opieoils.co.uk/

A guy form Opie Oils posts on many car websites under the pseudonym ‘The Oilman’ & here is an excellent article from one of them; it’s the first post;

http://www.ek9.org/forum/engine/26779-o ... dvice.html

My point on the TX4 engines is that perhaps they should be using & recommending a more recently developed oil as the above info clearly shows that the newer the specification of oil the better qualities it has for protecting, lubricating, cleaning & cooling the engine & lasting longer before losing viscosity.

But I think the main problem with the TX4 engines (& we’ve seen this so many times through the decades with other engine manufacturers having the same problems), is that the water & oil gallery forming materials used in the engine manufacture are not properly & carefully cleaned out of these galleries when the metal has cooled in the engine manufacturing process. And that’s just sheer negligence.

As far as I know, sand was, & probably still is, used to form water & oil galleries in the engine manufacturing process. After casting when the metal has cooled, it is imperative to get ALL the sand out of these galleries, for very obvious reasons. Any sand remaining, or if they use a different material now, must be entirely removed & this is where I speculate that the problem of premature engine failure is born; sloppy manufacturing techniques & negligence in this part of the engine’s manufacture.

The TX4 engine problems all point to this as being a likely cause of the premature engine failures that are being experienced. Sand or other water & oil gallery forming materials left in situ in varying quantities would give differing grades of the same problem as we are seeing.

A partly blocked water gallery or galleries would cause engine overheating in varying degrees, depending on the level of obstruction & could cause blockages in the radiator. It may also do nasty things like warping the head or in uneven extreme zonal overheating could render the engine scrap.

A partly blocked oil gallery or galleries would obviously cause lack of lubrication & also overheating in varying degrees, depending on the magnitude of the blockage or blockages, partial or full. Also, the lack of lubrication may not be evident for varying mileages, until perhaps a portion of the gallery forming material that might have been left in situ, breaks away to form the blockage. The same scenario is possible in the water galleries.

And I seem to recall one of the old British Leyland models from years gone by suffering the same catastrophic engine failures for this very reason.

And to me it seems very likely that history is repeating itself. This theory, in my mind , would certainly explain the differing degrees of the same problem.

And those are my theories.

Now someone like Mr T will likely tell me that I’m writing bullsh*t!!

_________________
Kind regards,

Brummie Cabbie.

Type a message, post your news,
Disagree with other members' views;
But please, do have some decorum,
When debating on the TDO Forum.

The Italians cannot make engines that work for any period of time without having to get the tool kit out
The VM engine was originally designed for a boat,
The Italians do make damm good gearboxes though, 1 forward 6 reverse

If you speak to the people selling new TX4's they will tell you there is no problem....But.. if you speak to the people in the workshop.. they will tell you there's one or two a month that are having to have new engines..... and as for what may be happening... I do not know... and in all truth.... do not want to know.... I'll be sticking to the Nissan 27.. for many years to come...

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Justice for the 96. It has only taken 27 years...........repeat the same lies for 27 years and the truth sounds strange to people!

If it is bullsh*t, it is very good bullsh*t.

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Grandad,

Dont know the plate nos, but i do know quite a few tx4 with blown engines also if you read any london forums it soon becomes clear that its very common !

And they are nearly 70 years old & were originally built for Mussolini's tanks.

_________________
Kind regards,

Brummie Cabbie.

Type a message, post your news,
Disagree with other members' views;
But please, do have some decorum,
When debating on the TDO Forum.

Probably, the forward gear was only for use when surprised by attack from the rear I believe.

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Chris The Fish

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gdlyi5mc ... re=related

This may well be true Trevor, but you know as well as I do the standards of maintenance that some owners and garages go for is zilch!

How many use an oil flush? How many even bother changing the oil every 10'000? I always insist my garage does this. I had a rental heap when I first started out, it had the Rover engine, and the oil looked like tar. Some folks just don't give a [edited by admin] about maintenance.

not sure using a flushing is a good idea unless the engine is due a stripdown, flushing oil strips every last drop of engine oil of every surface, leaving them bare and metal-to-metal when they are started up once refilled with engine oil for those few importatant seconds....

if you wish to flush just use a cheap oil, not flushing oil, fill it, let it run a few minutes till warm and drain.

Sorry Skippy I have to disagree

The engine in my PH is Italian, aside from regular servicing has been totally reliable, and I know of many other drivers who have the same unit in their cars.

My next PH will be Italian, I have run them as private cars for years and covered hundreds of thousands of miles with no issues, again all with regular servicing

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If it isn't black and shiny i'm not interested